Centurian Olympian

On this eve of the start of the Summer Olympics.  I wonder how many of you have ever dreamed of participating in the Olympics.  I know I have.  I have thought, what if....  But do these dreams ever have to die?  How old is too old?  Maybe we can't qualify for the regular Olympics, but what about something like the Big Sky State Games.  10,000 atheletes come to Billings, Montana to compete in the various sports of these games.  And how old is too old?  Well, Wayne's uncle Barney just competed this past weekend in the 4 x 100 relay in the 85+ group.  He is 101.  This picture was taken from a newscast that featured him.  He not only competed, but was able to meet Olgar Korbut who opened the games and lit the flame.  Well, maybe your dream isn't to compete in sports, but to accomplish something else in some other field.  The message here is, never give up on your dreams.  It is never too late.

The Dog Days of Summer

If these are the dog days of summer, it looks like a lot of fun!  With the hot weather of July we have been taking our dog Sebastian to our local dog park which happens to be on the shore of Lake Michigan.  The dogs have fun running in and out of the water chasing each other around.  It was a good opportunity to practice taking videos too.

 

Flowers Under Glass

A friend told me about a cool way to create an artsy photo.  When taking a flower picture, put a piece of art glass between the camera lens and the flower.

Here is a columbine naturally.

Here it is behind the artglass.

Here are a group of daylilies.

You have more distortion when the glass is farther from the flowers. And it is a little more realistic when the glass is closer to the flowers.

June 15 - Nature Photography Day

What does a nature photographer do on Nature Photography Day...why she goes out and takes pictures.  It was a beautiful day and my husband and I planned a bike ride at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and southward through some of the Cook County forest preserves.  Some things we saw on the way were .....the Japanese Gardens

and a pair of swans with cygnets.

We came back and had lunch at the garden's cafe, took a tour of a nice photo exhibit by the Garden Photographic Society and took in part of the gardens including these lily pads

The gardens were advertising their new exhibit Butterflies and Blooms where they have about 600 butterflies.  We decided to check it out and I had fun photographing these pretty flitters.

It was a great day over all.  Happy summer photographing to you.





Fireworks

    


     Summer is here and that means one of my favorite things....fireworks!  Winthrop Harbor had their annual summer faire this weekend and with that they had fireworks tonight.  I had to experiment taking a lot of pictures to get a few nice images captured.  These are some of my favorites.  They look like exotic flowers.
     To take these pictures, I set my camera at ISO 100, f8 and put my camera on a tripod.  I experimented with taking pictures at 3 sec., 6 sec., 8 sec. and 10 sec.  This way I could get just one burst or a few bursts in the same picture.

Flower Genetics

 I have photographed the Indian Paintbrush at Illinois Beach State Park for a number of years.  There was an area that was all yellow paintbrush.

 And there was an area in a different location of all red paintbrush.

This year there were a lot of flowers and they seemed to have mixed together.

 This created a different color. They were kind of orange, kind of salmon colored.

Here you can see the yellow and red combined.  Oh the fun of it all.

Same flower different colors

The nice thing about planting a wildflower garden is that you can have beautiful blooms close at hand to go out and photograph.  One of the beautiful flowers out right now are Columbine.   Here are the varieties I have.  You can experiment with different backgrounds and angles.